I submitted this proposal to PyCon 2014—win or lose, I hope to see you all there.

Submitted by:

Greg Wilson

Category:

Education

Python Level:

Novice

Audience:

scientists, educators, and community organizers

Objectives:

Attendees will learn what we know about free-range teaching and learning, why very smart people still mostly can't program, what's wrong with MOOCs, and what the #1 priority for creators of new programming languages ought to be.

Duration:

I prefer a 45 minute slot

Description:

This talk will explain how Software Carpentry has grown to run over a hundred training events a year, what we've learned along the way, and how you can do it too.

Abstract

Over the last 15 years, Software Carpentry has evolved from a week-long training course at the US national laboratories into a worldwide volunteer effort to raise standards in scientific computing. This talk explains what we have learned along the way the challenges we now face, and our plans for the future.

Outline

Overview

From Red to Green (or, why our first four attempts failed)

What We Do Now (what a bootcamp looks like, and why)

Small Things Add Up

live coding

open everything

use what we teach

meet the learners on their own ground

collaborative note-taking

sticky notes and minute cards

pair programming

keep experimenting

Instructor Training

TODO

too slow and too fast

finances

long-term assessment

installation, installation, installation

teach on the web (and why not)

what vs. how

standardization vs. customization

watching vs. doing

How You Can Help

Speaker Bio

Greg Wilson is the creator of Software Carpentry, a crash course in computing skills for scientists and engineers. He has worked for 25 years in high-performance computing, data visualization, computer security, and academia, and is the author or editor of several books on computing (including the 2008 Jolt Award winner "Beautiful Code") and two for children. Greg received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1993, and presently works for the Mozilla Foundation.